A Million Suns

he could become Eldest. I gave him three months. But as more and more people started to question him, it became clear he was hopeless. And then there was Bartie.” He sneers the name.

My eyes flick to Bartie, the green patch on his neck.

“Bartie thought he could start a revolution.” Doc rolls his eyes. “His attempts were clever — hacking into the floppies and the wi-coms was smart — but in the end he’s such a feeble sort of person. He would never really have what it takes to lead a true revolution. And besides,” Doc adds, “I wasn’t going to let dissent evolve into rebellion. Once we have a real leader again, any question of a revolt will disappear.”

I don’t like the way he says “disappear” in a voice that holds so much finality.

Doc’s gaze shifts to me. “I tried to help. I made the patches, and when Elder didn’t use them, I did. He could have used those deaths to instill the proper amount of fear required to demand obedience. But did you?” he asks, turning to Elder’s emotionless face. “No.” He shoves Elder’s body. Elder doesn’t resist, and he crashes against the Phydus machine. “As time went on,” Doc continues, “it became more and more obvious that what we needed was for him to step down. He was the one who needed to follow the leader. The warnings were for him.” He pokes a finger in Elder’s chest. Elder stares straight ahead, his body slack.

“And Marae?” I ask.

“I tried to talk to her. Of everyone on the ship, she should have been on Orion’s side. But no. She was for Elder.”

Doc places the wires on top of the Phydus pump. The drug is not his main concern. He strolls across the room, back to Orion’s cryo chamber.

“It’s too late anyway, Amy.” Doc sighs, a sound filled with disappointment. “Whatever kind of leader Bartie thought he could be or Elder may one day become, Orion already is. His only mistake was in trusting you to make the choice about the shuttle. I let you find Orion’s vids, but I should have destroyed them all.”

My mind races. “Why did you even give me Orion’s wi-com?” I ask. “You must have known it would lead us to the clues he left!”

Doc glances up at me. “I did it,” he says, “because Orion asked me to.”

And it really is as simple as that. Call him anything you want, but Doc’s loyal. Not to Eldest, not even to Orion, and certainly not to Elder. He’s loyal to the system. According to the system, Orion should be the next leader, and, therefore, the person Doc will blindly obey — even when he disagrees.

But — this doesn’t make sense. “If you’re the one who gave me the first clue, then who tampered with the sonnet book and the clue in the armory?”

“I did.” Doc checks a dial on Orion’s cryo chamber.

“You? But—why?”

He looks at me as if he can’t quite believe how slow I am. “I didn’t do it for me. This ship — everyone on board — we could all die if we land on Centauri-Earth. Die. But,” he adds, “I’m not unreasonable. I’ll let the Eldest make the final decision. If he says the shuttle should be launched, well, I will step aside. I just didn’t think he was right in choosing you as his decision maker.”

I finally understand — he altered the clue in the armory and cut out the page in the sonnet book because he didn’t want me to succeed. But he still left the book so I could find it. He didn’t want me to find the clue, but he couldn’t disobey Orion all the way.

“Did you mess with the space suits?” I ask.

“I figured if you got in there, one of you would use them.”

“And you didn’t care which one of us died?”

“If it helps,” Doc says, turning back to the dials on Orion’s cryo chamber, “I’d hoped it would have been you.”

It doesn’t help, actually.

“You never did realize the thing I needed you to understand,” Doc continues, adjusting another dial. “You got so obsessed with what Orion was showing you that you never saw what I was showing you.”

“Yeah?” I say. “And what was that?”

“That the important thing wasn’t getting off the ship. We can’t get off the ship, Amy, we can’t. Orion hoped that one day, far in the future, it would be possible, but no. The armory, the probes — it’s too dangerous. We have to stay here. We have to maintain the same order we’ve always had since the Plague Eldest.”

I can’t help myself — I snort in disgust.

“I know you disagree, Amy,” Doc says idly, as if we’re having a casual conversation between friends. “But the Eldest system works.”

“Eldest was twisted, sick,” I say. “You saw him at the end. He was too desperate for power.”

“Yes, yes,” Doc says dismissively. “There are aberrations in every Elder and Eldest, that is well documented, and Eldest should have stepped down when Orion came of age. And Orion — not Elder — should have become Eldest.”

“Orion was a psycho!” I shout. I start to move forward, knocking into Bartie’s shoulder as I do. He stares blankly ahead.

This was the wrong thing to do. The gun tightens in Victria’s hand — she loves Orion, after all — and Doc moves closer to the cryo chamber.

“He is neither a ‘psycho,’ nor is he Orion,” Doc says, turning a dial on the chamber door. “He is Eldest.” He looks back at Elder, still standing motionless by the Phydus machine. “You never wanted to be Eldest, did you? You always wanted to be just Elder. That’s why you wouldn’t change your name. You knew, didn’t you, that you weren’t good enough to be Eldest. You’re still just a child, preoccupied more with your silly infatuation than responsibility.”

Elder — patched and silent — nods in agreement.

“Don’t talk about Elder like that!” I roar. “Orion was a coward who killed helpless people!”

Doc turns toward me. “Don’t forget, it was Orion who gave you your precious planet, not Elder. Even when he was nothing but a block of ice, he still controlled you as you searched the whole ship for his clues. That’s the power of a real leader.”

He’s so calm, so even and measured — just like he always is. Even in this — in murdering people in Orion’s name, in staging a coup to overthrow Elder — even now, there’s no fire in Doc’s eyes. He’s just quietly and steadfastly moving forward with what he thinks is so obviously right. He’s putting us all in our assigned places. Orion as Eldest. Elder as Elder. And me — I’m still, as usual, the one he can’t categorize. And that’s the real reason why he’s got Victria pointing a gun in my face.

And I know for sure now, I know it deep down inside me — I’m not going to get out of this. I don’t fit in with Doc’s plan because I don’t fit in on Godspeed, and Doc can’t stand to have something — someone — stick out. He needs everyone to be perfectly the same, perfectly calm, and perfectly obedient to the proper Eldest, and I never, ever, will be.

I am so certain that Doc won’t let me out of this room alive that I half expect Victria to pull the trigger and end it all now. Instead, Doc punches a code into Orion’s cryo chamber.

Doc turns back around. “Amy, I’m no leader. I know that. I only want to do what I’ve been trying to tell everyone else to do.”

“Follow the leader,” I say softly.

“Exactly. There’s no hope anymore,” Doc says. “We can’t land on the new planet. And we can’t survive up here without Orion. Don’t you see? We need a real leader. Not Bartie, not Elder. We need our Eldest. It’s our only hope.”

Victria looks up at Doc, but he isn’t looking at her; he’s looking at me. “I just want Orion back,” she says, but he doesn’t pay any attention to her.

“We’re not talking about hope,” I tell Doc, but my eyes are on Victria. “We’re talking about faith. Faith that the new world will be better than this. And faith that even if it’s not, it will be worth the risk to go down there and see.”

Orion’s cryo chamber beeps, a loud echoing sound.